FATHER GOES TO SPY OUT THE LAND

It seemed to me that father and mother spent a great deal of unnecessary time in discussing whether they would change their home from Mississippi to Texas. In fact I was beginning to despair of ever becoming a sheep raiser in the Peters colony, when father suddenly declared that he would go to see the country for himself, and if it was half as good as people said it was, he would lay out his claim of six hundred and forty acres and come back to sell the plantation and move the live stock.

I begged hard to be allowed to go with him, but my request was not to be granted, for although we owned two slaves, John and Zeba, neither of them could be trusted to look after the cattle, the sheep, and the mules.

Therefore it was decided that I should be the head of the family while father was away, and so proud was I over being given such a position of trust, that I failed to grieve, as I otherwise might have done, at not being allowed to go with him.

He set out with a pair of our best mules hitched to a light wagon, intending to drive to Little Rock in Arkansas, and from there to Fort Towson, after which he would make his way across what is now Grayson County, spying out the land.